The X-Meridian 7.1 Thread - Page 68

try this then until win7 meridian drivers are made:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...php?p=16384835

Would you guys say that the new HT Omega Halo (with swapped out LM4562's) would be a substantial upgrade to the X-Meridian with the same OPAMPs? I'm wondering if it's worth the purchase or not. I use the analog outs and wonder if the dedicated RCA outs on the HALO would provide better sound quality than the minijacks on the X-Meridian?

only if the minijacks are giving you problems.... once the connection is made and continues without drop-outs or static-like intermittents, you will hear no difference... all else being equal!

OK... but other than the RCA/minijack difference... is the card itself considered an upgrade over the X-Meridian? Or would the difference be so miniscule that it simply would not warrant changing the card?

my guess is the latter...

Looking for an X-Tension DIN board... anyone got one for sale?

Do not bother with the official drivers from the X-Meridian site for Windows 7. They are "bunk" no control panel still.

The best solution is still found here.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...php?p=16384835

My card died yesterday. Motherboard seems ok since other PCI cards are recognized by Windows (XP & Vista). XP and Vista do not recognize my XM anymore in both slots available. Onboard sound is disabled, but even with it enabled the XM is still unrecognizable. My case was open at the time and maybe my cat got his paws in there and sparked something. But, the board looks fine - no burns.

Maybe someone with good mod skills might be able to easily fix it and might be interested in my card. Who knows...

Maybe it's time to buy the new Asus cards. I can't imagine what could have gone wrong. Not sure if anyone has trouble shooting suggestions.

XM works again after spending weeks figuring out why it died.

I booted the computer one day and it hung up. I took the card out and it booted up. I bought a temp motherboard and the XM worked on it. Apparently, there is an IRQ conflict. Fortunately, the card is fine but unfortunately I had to resolve the conflict. The problem occurred after I installed additional SATA hard drives.

Scored one for $110 on the eecky bay.

Wife gets new Vista computer (pland on Barracuda
AC-1 drivers) at work, i have
a nice surprise 2 channel system with this card,
Parasound Zamp v.2 and Athena bookshelves.
Octoshape stations esp SwissPop should sound
great on it.

Pleased to report that the Razer Barracuda AC-1 XP 32 bit drivers work great on my wife's Optiplex 760. The control window is nice.

Sadly, the Auzentech software has no control window and on top DLL errors showed up. Go figure, another Creative team, ie superb hardware with poor drivers. Any comments?

Returning to htpc after some years and my x-meridian still doing its job but when new hd-formats (truehd and dts-hd-ma) seems to be the all the rage I am wondering:
-What happened to the "analogue hole"? Will everything be down-converted to 16 bits for us with non-PAP sound cards?
Is my XM out-dated?

According to stats here: http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Stats.php

About 1/3 of disks have 24-bit audio...so you're only sometimes outdated, and that's if the rest of your system can provide sufficient resolution that you can hear the difference between the 24-bit and the dithered 16-bit.

I know we all love perfection, but sometimes you need to balance the investments, and right now upgrading my X-Meridian is at the bottom of the list. I have enough other problems that this falls towards the bottom.

Eventually reverted back to the Auzentech drivers, the interface looks more professional and less like a first-person-shooter night vision.

The X-Medirian, Zamp v.2, and Athenas definitely make a great 2 channel system.

Yeah, but they do not offer basic features like delay settings!
I am also using the Razor drivers (@ Win7) although I also hate their interface look..

Anyone using the analog outputs try playing a DTS-CD on XP?

I found that, regardless of the player software, DTS-CDs frequently cause ear-splitting static. Not the static from the player treating the audio tracks like normal wav files, but full-volume (as if the volume control has magically jumped to 100%) static. It is intermittent but too frequent to ignore.

I had about given up on surround-sound music when I decided "to hell with disc space" -- I'll just re-encode the dts-cd to multi-channel flac. The problem was that it did not help. Even the flac files would sometimes play right and sometimes cause ear-splitting static.

I finally figured out the problem, DTS-CDs are 44.1KHz just like normal stereo CDs. If I resample them to 48Khz I never, not even once now over about 50 hours of listening, get static. It seems that auzentech, or probably C-Media, didn't test their drivers for 44.1Khz 5.1 audio very well the result being that they flip-out and run the card at full-blast static mode about half of the time with 5.1 44.1Khz audio.

So, if you are experiencing loud annoying/scary bursts of static with this card, see if your player software can resample up to 48Khz or 88.2Khz after the DTS decoding to wav audio. I use foobar2000 myself and the resample filter is dead simple to use.

The problem of the Auzen Win 7 drivers is that there is no control panel? So, there is no way to set volume, delays, input/output (5.1/7.1, Dobly IIx) etc.? That would mean they are almost useless.
I installed directly the Razer ones, seem to work fine, although I can't figure out if there's a way to listen to test sounds for speaker identification and volume adjust.
I click on the speakers (and pretty much everywhere) and nothing happens.

I installed the Win 7 32 bit drivers, if you go under Programs you will see the classic C-Media Oxygen HD blue interface, so you can tweak away. I don't like the childish gamer interface on the AC-1, but it serves me well as the only non C-media proprietary interface that allows me to control a C-Media 8788 Asus Xonar DX clone card at work (better opamps than the B-Enspirers i use strictly for PCM 192 KHz out to HTPCs at home). Yep, Asus rebadged a 8788 but it can be fed the drivers and oh boy, a surprisingly good performer as checked in side-by-side in a Dell Precision 7550 at work (OMG DDR3 up to 192GB memory, where are these machines headed?) tests with my Canton Karat M 30 D 3-way bookshelves on Marantz MA-500 monos.

Do you get speaker delays in that driver? I dont see it in the x64 drivers...

Tried the X-Meridian in a new Win-7 x86 installation, installed the Auzentech drivers with their nice control panel (no speaker delays though) but I get horrible Windows lock-ups (won't even boot mostly), say 8 out of 10 times. Only way for Windows to work, is to remove the card. I'll try the Razer drivers again...

I need to sell (sadly, given that you can't buy this anymore) my X-Meridian with 3 different sets of Opamps. My wife lost her job and now it’s time to minimize. Before I throw it up on ebay, I thought I’d let you guys take a shot at it.

The card is all stock, in 100% working condition, and will come with:

- Stock Auzentech Opamps - 4 pieces
- LM4562 - 4 pieces
- OPA2227PA-ND - 4 pieces

Please PM me, if any interest.

My 1/8" jacks started acting odd and apparantly there was stress put on them....very loose and missing one side on each one (left on the fronts for example does not work). Does anyone know the replacement part for these? I am using onboard audio right now and it's killin me!

It's more likely a cracked solder joint problem.... reflow with a soldering iron and a pinch of fresh solder.

pm sent

Thought I'd shake this thread back up.....

Are you guys still using your X-meridan or have you moved on to something else. If so, what?

I am toying with the idea of a DAC but not sure what a good next step upgrade would be

Yeah I wonder what else is out

Hey X people. Its been some time since I last checked in. Not sure how many X users are still out there. I still am happy with my card. No problems at all. But just maybe on the horizon..........................................

There are a couple of sound cards that come to mind for those that would like to take that plunge. Asus Xonar ST and RME Hammerfall 9632.

My world is strictly audio. I'm not a PC gamer or movie buff, on the PC that is. My card is plugged directly into my sound system.

The other preferred option for that upgrade is an USB external DAC. Now we have an abundance of choices and price ranges these days. It has been all the rage for the last year or so in the the audio world. Personally my budget would include The new Musical Fidelity M1 upsampler dac ( £399 No US price yet ) or the upcoming Wadia Digital 121 upsampling Dac/pre will be available in two versions, $999 for base unit and $1499 with a built-in headphone amplifier.

http://www.musicalfidelity.com/produ...1DAC/M1DAC.asp


and the up and coming...



The 121 will have 5 digital inputs. (2 S/PDIF, 1 TOSLINK, 1 USB, AES/EBU) The 121 will feature a Digimaster Filter, along with a Swift Current analog section. The new DAC will also have the direct connect output with volume control and multiple voltage outputs. The 121 will also have a headphone jack with discrete output. With the 121, Wadia expects to set a new standard in affordable digital to analog converters. And as well cover all sampling rates from 44,48,88, 96, 176 and 192 khz. All inputs, excluding the USB (24-bit/96kHz), input can accept up to a 24-bit/192kHz input data rate. Once the data enters the system, our data sampling technology uses a spline interpolation algorithm to up-sample all incoming data to 24 bit/ 384kHz for high performance conversion. The algorithm reduces interpolation error and creates highly accurate representations of the original performance. The 121 will hopefully be ready by the end of the year.

I'm still with the X-Meridian on Win 7 x64 with Burson Opamps and Low Jitter Clock upgrades ...

... pics if anyones interested http://www.avforums.com/forums/sound...ter-today.html

And I thought I was only insane....lol. Nice job. Good to see there are other audio enthusiasts that will go the extra mile to achieve better quality sound. Kudos.